Avoiding cooking in caching interrupted simulation

[art3mis]

Created a basic 240 frame RBD simulation. Once I was happy with it I wanted to 'bake it' so I clicked "save to Disk' on my Output node inside my AutoDOP network.

As a test at frame 120 I interrupted the Save to Disk operation.

I also enabled "Playback from Saved files" on the parent AutoDOP node.

So now frames 1-120 are highlited in purple on my timeline.

At a later time I wanted to see if I could complete the "save to Disk" of my simulation so for start frame on my Output node I entered 121.

I then clicked "Save to Disk" but instead of immediately caching my simulation I see "DOP cooking frame 1-120" on my timeline and have to wait an hour or more until my caching operation continues on frame 121.

Is there any way of avoiding this cooking operation? It seems unnecessary to me.

On a related topic I thought the whole advantage of the .sim format was that it saved state information, so I shouldn't even have to enter a start frame when continuing an interrupted cache operation. Houdini should 'know' where I left off, no?

 

 

 

 

[Atom]

I wondered about that as well. Personally I don't use .sim files. I think they are just left over from an older time. I just write out the .bgeo. sc sequence from the import node.

 

Did you alter any single setting in the simulation? Perhaps Houdini has detected that the current settings and .sim file settings are different and it simply trying to be accurate?

Edited August 21, 2017 by Atom

[art3mis]

Thanks Atom. No, to the best of my knowledge am only changing some ROP settings, but that should have no effect on saved sim information

Further searching has led me to believe that "Explicit Caching" is what I need, however I don't see this in H16.

Has it been replaced by checkpoints or?

Edited August 21, 2017 by art3mis

[jamesr]

Have you tried plugging the .sim frame into the dopnet's initial state parameter?